In his Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee 2025 (n.13), Pope Francis identified migrants as being one of the recipient groups for whom "signs of hope" should be expressed during the Jubilee year:
Signs of hope should also be present for migrants who leave their homelands behind in search of a better life for themselves and for their families. Their expectations must not be frustrated by prejudice and rejection. A spirit of welcome, which embraces everyone with respect for his or her dignity, should be accompanied by a sense of responsibility, lest anyone be denied the right to a dignified existence. Exiles, displaced persons and refugees, whom international tensions force to emigrate in order to avoid war, violence and discrimination, ought to be guaranteed security and access to employment and education, the means they need to find their place in a new social context.
Each year, the Catholic Church marks a "World Day of Migrants and Refugees". Pope Francis chose the theme "Free to choose whether to migrate or to stay" as the theme for the day celebrated in September 2023. The theme is described in Pope Francis' message for the day:
Joint efforts are needed by individual countries and the international community to ensure that all enjoy the right not to be forced to emigrate, in other words, the chance to live in peace and with dignity in one's own country. This right has yet to be codified, but it is one of fundamental importance, and its protection must be seen as a shared responsibility on the part of all States with respect to a common good that transcends national borders. ....
.... even as we work to ensure that in every case migration is the fruit of a free decision, we are called to show maximum respect for the dignity of each migrant; this entails accompanying and managing waves of migration as best we can, constructing bridges and not walls, expanding channels for a safe and regular migration. In whatever place we decide to build our future, in the country of our birth or elsewhere, the important thing is that there always be a community ready to welcome, protect, promote and integrate everyone, without distinctions and without excluding anyone.
There is a right, recognised in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in Protocol 4 to the European Convention on Human Rights, to freedom of movement within the territory of one's own country. The kind of internal movements governed by this right should perhaps also be included under the heading of migration, and might clearly be seen as such in territories where conflict forces peoples to move from one region to another. But a reason for such movements in developed nations - the seeking of better employment opportunities and better life chances in general - is instructive for how we might view migration more generally. The legitimacy of migration to flee conflict or persecution may be readily accepted; but migration for economic reasons when the alternative is to remain in dire poverty, that is, a migration in favour of a life more fully in accord with the dignity of the person, also has a legitimacy.
If Pope Francis' suggestion that peoples should be genuinely free to choose between migrating and staying is correct, it is clear that the establishing of such a freedom does not rest with the receiving country or the home country in isolation from each other. It needs to be a shared endeavour and not a unilateral one.
A recent intervention on the subject of migrants and refugees is Pope Francis' letter to the Bishops of the United States, written in response to events in that country with regard to the deportation of migrants who are in the country illegally.
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